Wednesday, November 28, 2012

One of the publishing events of the year was the publication of the selected poetry and prose of Amelia Rosselli by University of Chicago Press. This book, the first substantial collection of Rosselli's work in English, is translated and introduced by Jennfier Scappettone, who has an ear for the English of Rosselli's music.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Throughout his life, William Carlos Williams was an enthusiastic supporter of small presses, not only out of gratitude at the role they had played in the evolution of his own work as a publishing poet, but because he knew that was where you looked to find the most exciting new developments in literature, developments that would subsequently be promoted by the larger and more established presses.Thanks to Kass Fleisher and Joe Amato, themselves two of our finest contemporary writers, we now have new works appearing from their freshly christened Steerage Press. The series starts off with Joe's own Big Man with a Shovel, and has continued with a collection of poetry from Chris Pusateri, whose title hits on the same musical obsessions that haunt me, and a striking new novel from Michael Joyce. Joyce's book carries a preface written by Stuart Moulthrop, who I knew a bit when he was an undergraduate at George Washington University before he went on to study at Yale and become known as an early practitioner of what we now term digital humanities. (Back when I knew Stuart, I was a participant in The Association for Computers in the Humanities -- but back then I also wrote a lot of code.)